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Researchers at the University of Dublin are claiming a major breakthrough in the manufacturing of graphene that could clear the way for mass industrial production of the material. Graphene has a vast number of potential uses — it’s an incredible conductor of electricity, strong, nearly transparent, and extremely thin — but manufacturing it in volume has proven extremely difficult.

The Irish team’s approach focused on mechanical exfoliation of graphene. Graphene was originally discovered through mechanical exfoliation through the repeated application of scotch tape to layers of graphite (yes, Scotch tape). In this new method, graphite is mixed into stabilizing liquids and fed into a high shear mixer, like the one shown below. The mixer cleaves off graphene sheets of sufficient size and quantity to qualify as industrial production; the team claims that “exfoliation can be achieved in liquid volumes from hundreds of milliliters up to hundreds of liters and beyond.”

That’s a huge step forward for graphene and could open the field up to applications in composite materials or conductive coatings. Making graphene cheaper will also spur further research into the material, as it lowers the cost of incorporating graphene into modern products.

Semiconductors, however, are still quite far away. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) recently released its new roadmaps (dated 2013, as the work was completed in that year), so I took a look at what the updated graphene predictions look like.

From 2011 to 2013: a few steps forward, a few steps back

The charts below represent the ITRS’ current thinking on various future materials and whether or not those materials are currently performing better, worse, or equivalently to conventional silicon. I’ve reprinted the charts from both the 2011 and the 2013 reports to give a better indication of how thinking has evolved on multiple materials. Graphene is the focus of our conversation today, but the data on III-V semiconductors, nanowires, and carbon nanotubes is also relevant, given that graphene competes with those materials as the possible future of semiconductor manufacturing.

Next, here’s the chart from 2013. The data in these charts is based on surveys of ITRS members and represent the current thinking on how challenging it will be to integrate various materials into CMOS manufacturing.

Flip between the two and you’ll notice that we’ve taken two steps forward and one step back in multiple cases. Several aspects of III-V design are proving more difficult to implement in 2013 than they looked in 2011, while other areas have improved. Graphene has made huge strides forward in gate dielectric compatibility (from 1.3 to 1.9) but fallen sharply backwards in terms of defect density (from 1.8 to 1.3).

There are many facets to this problem, which is why industrial-scale production of graphene remains just one step in a complicated manufacturing process. Integrating exfoliated graphene into semiconductor manufacturing is challenging — it’s extremely difficult to ensure uniform distribution of the material. Epitaxially (depositing a crystalline overlayer on a crystalline substrate) deposited graphene is a preferred solution for managing defects, but scientists are still searching for an effective, low-cost, and easily integrated method of depositing graphene via CVD (chemical vapor deposition). It’s possible, therefore, that this new exfoliation method will still be used in semiconductor applications if it scales effectively enough.

Samsung’s approach is more directly applicable to the manufacturing of semiconductors, but Samsung hasn’t given much information on the characteristics of these structures.

It’s hard to understate how important those characteristics are. We’re at the point where we can build functional transistors out of graphene with some poor characteristics relative to silicon. The problem graphene (and CNTs, and III-Vs, and all manner of other technologies) face is that they’re trying to hit moving targets.

For example: Let’s say Samsung’s graphene tech is just as good as 250nm technology. That’s a big step forward, considering we couldn’t build bandgaps into the stuff a few years back. But if it costs 10x more than silicon right now, at 250nm-equivalent scaling in terms of leakage currents and overall performance, than… well, that’s not very effective.

So the goal everyone is trying to pull off is to be the ultimate oracle of the future. Everybody wants to be the company that suddenly FIGURES IT ALL OUT. But nobody wants to sink all their cash into graphene and then, suddenly, Intel partners with Dominoes and discovers that melting cheese over a wafer creates the 3D structure known as FinFETA — thereby ushering in a golden, tasty age for semiconductor computing!

Marc Guillot

Thanks guys.

Justin

FinFETA – *Drools on himself, a la Homer Simpson”

Joel Hruska

Sadly, I can’t claim to have come up with FinFETA. A friend suggested it.

The paper doesn’t say it but he was eating a Woodstock’s Pizza with whole wheat crust, pineapples, pepperoni, olives, mushrooms, and extra cheese.

RIC

odd, why no mention of graphene monoxide (GMO)

” GMO is semiconducting, with conducting, and insulating found in the carbon family, offering needed compatibility for use in future electronics. Mixing theory and experiments The team created GMO conducting research into the behaviour of a hybrid nano material engineered by Chen that consists of carbon nanotubes (rolled cylinder grapheme) decorated with tin oxide (SnO0 nano particles.

In one experiment, they heated graphene oxide (GO) in a vacuum to reduce oxygen but the carbon and oxygen atoms in the layers of GO became aligned, transforming themselves into the “ordered,” semiconducting GMO—a carbon oxide that does not exist naturally.

Joel Hruska

Near as I can tell, there’s been no discussion of GMO outside of three research papers published since 2011. So there’s no mention of it here because there’s been very little to talk about. It isn’t mentioned in the ITRS reports, or not that I saw.

However, we need to talk about the idea that we’re just a graphene-fueled invention away from 100GHz.

1). Not all transistors switch at 3-4GHz. There are transistors built on non-silicon substrates that switch much, much faster than this. They also consume far more power and they aren’t used for building digital logic circuits. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t really speak to our needs or technology covered at ET.

To coin a rough analogy: The laser technology used to read CD-ROMs and the laser technology the Navy has explored as part of its weapons programs are both lasers — but innovations in the use of lasers as weapons doesn’t really help us build better data storage.

2). The ability to build incredi-fast transistors doesn’t actually help us very much. Intel demonstrated 10GHz transistors back in 2000 built according to 7nm design rules and claimed it would power chips with up to 400 million transistors. Today, Intel chips have 1.4B transistors — and even if we chop off the GPU blocks, they’re far above that 400M block. Why?

Because it turns out it was easier to build more cores than it was to stuff transistors into tiny spaces and then clock them like the dickens. What one transistor can withstand, 1.4B of them packed into a space the size of your thumbnail cannot.

dc

It would be cool to have a graphene table top, that was also a computer. I wonder if you can make a screen out of it? Table Top, computer, screen all in one.

i dont think these use carbon/graphene, then OC separately, there’s also the
World’s Thinnest LED Is Three Atoms Thick made form tungsten diselenide (WSe2) that is just three atomic layers thick.

so there’s a selection of new options opening up now for Photonics and VLC too, so take your pick for a composite Table Top computer

dc

I just liked the near clear nature of graphene. It would look quartz-like until you turned it on. That would be pretty awesome, kind of like the computers in the original (and best) Superman movie, that Superman’s parents were using back on Krypton.

http://www.waynemcmichael.com batmanroxus

Ahhh somebody will drop their semi-sweet chocolate in someone else’s solution and there we go, Semiconductors:)

eonvee375

“but its integration into conventional CMOS and digital processors remains a difficult problem.”

all i needed to read,
at the same time i never expect more from an article that has “could” in its title…

RIC

“could” is eveywhere OC but the option is there today should a multi national take these nano option’s on board ….

“Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed an exfoliation method for the two-dimensional (2D) material molybdenum disulfide that leads to crystals of the substance becoming high quality monolayer flakes. These flakes can made into a solution that could be used for printable photonics and electronics….”

Practical graphene is 20 years away. It’s clear that CPUs, even whole platforms that are legacy silicon: dead.

Monolithic GaAs-based optoelectronics are coming like a freight train *NOW*, at 100x the speed and 80% less power draw. Bolt-on to CMOS, so the fabs don’t have to squirm in order to implement. NASA’s got this tech live, in orbit today. And being GaAs, it’s EMP-proof, to boot (bonus woody for the tinfoil hat crowd).

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